Free Republic

DALLAS — A mistrial has been declared for five of six defendants in the case of a Muslim charity charged with financing Middle Eastern terrorists. The read verdict said the jurors found three leaders of a group that was once America's largest Muslim charity not guilty of funneling illegal aid to terrorists, but the panel was sent back to deliberate on the other defendants after three jurors said the verdicts read in court were wrong. Because of the confusion, the judge did not officially accept those verdicts, which aquitted charity fundraiser Mufid Abdulqader on all counts and two others on...

Terror Funding: Inviting Americans to convert, Osama bin Laden says Islam requires no tax, just a 2.5% tithe to Allah. What he doesn't say is much of those funds benefit terrorists like him. The shocking truth is that Islamic religious giving — called "zakat," the third pillar of Islam — supports terrorism. And millions of the blood money is donated by American Muslims through mosques and various charities once considered mainstream. Since 9/11, U.S. counterterrorism authorities have had to put a whopping six major Muslim charities out of business, including the biggest — the Holy Land Foundation. All have been...

<p>Amid the mountain of evidence released in the Holy Land Foundation terrorism financing trial, the most provocative has turned out to be a handful of previously classified evidence detailing Islamist extremists' ambitious plans for a U.S. takeover. A knot of terrorism researchers say the memos and audiotapes, many translated from Arabic and containing detailed strategies by the international Islamist group the Muslim Brotherhood, are proof that extremists have long sought to replace the Constitution with Shariah, or Islamic law.</p>

The on-going Holy Land Foundation trial has established important facts about the resident domestic Islamic jihad threat inside the United States. Although evidence brought forward in documents and testimony has explosive implications for US Homeland Security, the intelligence community, and every American citizen, relatively little media attention has been paid to it. This information also has serious implications for professionals, military and civilian, involved in homeland security, DoD plans and strategy as well as national agency intelligence analysts and local law enforcement. The raw documents outlining the strategic goals and activities of the Muslim Brotherhood in America, now exposed for...

A 1991 strategy paper for the Brotherhood, often referred to as the Ikhwan in Arabic, found in the Virginia home of an unindicted co-conspirator in the case, describes the group's U.S. goals, referred to as a "civilization-jihadist process." "The Ikhwan must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and sabotaging its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God's religion is made victorious over all other religions," it states. This process requires a "mastery of the...

Amid the mountain of evidence released in the Holy Land Foundation terrorism financing trial, the most provocative has turned out to be a handful of previously classified evidence detailing Islamist extremists' ambitious plans for a U.S. takeover. Also Online Link: See the documents presented as evidence in the case Archive: Read previous DMN stories about the Holy Land Foundation case A knot of terrorism researchers say the memos and audiotapes, many translated from Arabic and containing detailed strategies by the international Islamist group the Muslim Brotherhood, are proof that extremists have long sought to replace the Constitution with Shariah, or...

The on-going Holy Land Foundation trial has established important facts about the resident domestic Islamic jihad threat inside the United States. Although evidence brought forward in documents and testimony has explosive implications for US Homeland Security, the intelligence community, and every American citizen, relatively little media attention has been paid to it. This information also has serious implications for professionals, military and civilian, involved in homeland security...The raw documents outlining the strategic goals and activities of the Muslim Brotherhood in America, now exposed for public view, are substantiating the concerns.. From an intelligence perspective, the first thing in evaluating these...

DALLAS Prosecutors have produced scores of documents, audio and video tapes, and intercepted phone calls in their attempt to prove that a Muslim charity based in a suburban Dallas office park was actually a fund-raising arm of Middle Eastern terrorists.Much of the evidence has surfaced before in books, newspaper articles and previous trials. But those who track terror-financing say the document haul from the trial of the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development has also produced new information.They say the documents shed light on a web of related organizations of militant Palestinian supporters in the United States, some of...

Justice Dept. accused of impeding CAIR DALLAS, Aug. 22 (UPI) -- The U.S. Justice Department has been accused by the Council on American-Islamic Relations of impeding its operations through a Texas court case. In a brief filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, CAIR said that being named by the Justice Department as an unindicted co-conspirator in a terror case has hurt its regular operations, The Washington Times said Wednesday. "The public naming of CAIR as an unindicted co-conspirator has impeded its ability to collect donations as possible donors either do not want to give...

This week, federal prosecutors filed documents in a Dallas court relating to the upcoming trial of those accused of running a fundraising organization for the Hamas terrorist group. Among those listed as unindicted co-conspirators in the case of the Hamas-controlled Holy Land Foundation is the Council on American-Islamic Relations, otherwise known as CAIR. For those who have closely studied the origins of groups like CAIR, this development cannot be considered a surprise. As experts on the issue, like Steven Emerson, have long pointed out, CAIR was founded largely as a political front for Hamas fundraising in the United States. Its...

Listing of 300 Muslim individuals, institutions called ‘unconstitutional’ In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE (WASHINGTON, D.C., 8/16/2007) - A prominent national Islamic civil rights and advocacy group today announced the filing of an amicus brief relating to the ongoing trial of the Holy Land Foundation Muslim charity in Texas. The brief, filed by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), asks the court to remove the Washington-based group’s name, and that of several hundred other Muslim individuals and institutions, from a list of so-called “unindicted co-conspirators.” In a related development, the National Association of Muslim...

Disaster Looms in Pakistan Decorum was abandoned as accusations ricocheted between the wood-panelled walls of Pakistan's national assembly on Monday night. "Murderers! Murderers of innocent people!" screamed an MP from a religious party, his yellow turban shaking as he wagged a finger towards the government benches. Five female parliamentarians, their faces concealed behind black and white burkas, slapped the benches with open palms. Another mullah stood up and started shouting. The speaker strained to maintain order. Others were less captivated by the debate on last month's siege of the Red Mosque, in which more than 100 people died. One...

New York Times turns to Supreme Court 2 hours, 47 minutes ago The New York Times asked the Supreme Court on Friday to block the government from reviewing the phone records of two reporters in a leak investigation about a terrorism-funding probe. The case involved stories written in 2001 by Times reporters Judith Miller and Philip Shenon that revealed the government's plans to freeze the assets of two Islamic charities, the Holy Land Foundation and the Global Relief Foundation. In a 2-1 decision, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said federal prosecutors can see the phone records of Shenon...

Spokesman for 6 Muslim clerics barred from US Airways flight One of six Muslim imams pulled from a US Airways flight in Minneapolis last night by federal authorities is affiliated with a Hamas-linked organization and acknowledged a connection to Osama bin Laden in the 1990s. Omar Shahin, who served as a spokesman for the clerics, is a representative of the Kind Hearts Organization, which had its assets frozen by the U.S. Treasury pending an investigation, notes Islam scholar Robert Spencer on his weblog JihadWatch Treasury spokesman Stuart Levey in February said KindHearts "is the progeny of Holy Land Foundation and...

FBI agents yesterday raided the suburban Detroit headquarters of LIFE for Relief and Development (LRD), the largest Islamic charity in the country. I first wrote about the group for The Post in 2003. Back then, FBI Director Robert Mueller was set to give an award to Imad Hamad, who heads the Midwest chapter of the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC). But, after my Post article pointed out that Hamad was a subject in over a dozen terrorism-related investigations, the FBI revoked the award. One of those investigations concerned Hamad's close ties to LRD. Both the FBI and the then-U.S. Customs...

Counterterrorism efforts got a major boost last week when a U.S. district court found three Muslim organizations and one individual, mostly based in the Chicago area, guilty of funding Hamas and fined them an astonishing $156 million. The four were found liable for their roles in the murder of an American teenager, David Boim, on May 13, 1996, when he was shot by Hamas operatives as he waited for a bus near Jerusalem. This case is important in itself, providing some measure of justice and relief for the Boim family. Beyond that, it helps fight terrorism in four ways. First,...

The U.S. Department of Justice raided and the Treasury Department froze the assets Sunday of an Ohio-based Muslim charity whose founder was once an official with a defunct Muslim charity in Bridgeview, the department said. No charges were filed Sunday against Khaled Smaili, the founder of KindHearts of Toledo, but the charity's assets were frozen pending further investigation into claims that the group gave money to Hamas, an Islamic organization that the U.S. considers a terrorist group, the department said. In January, Hamas won a majority of seats in the Palestinian Legislative Council. "KindHearts is the progeny of Holy Land...

Federal prosecutors and investigators in Dallas acknowledged in court documents that they mistakenly gave defense lawyers information about the inner-workings of secretive counterterrorism investigations. It took federal officials four months to discover that in April they had turned over secret court applications for wiretaps, which often have sensitive information from U.S. and foreign intelligence agencies, according to court papers that were unsealed this week. The materials were given to lawyers for the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development and seven of its senior officers, who have been indicted on charges they illegally funneled millions of dollars to support the...

Imam Fawaz Damra helped lay the groundwork for an organization that ultimately merged into al-Qaida in the late 1980s. He was an unindicted co-conspirator of the terrorists who bombed the World Trade Center in 1993. And he passionately raised money for the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which killed dozens of Jews in Israel during the 1990s. Yet Damra, spiritual leader to thousands of Muslims in Northeast Ohio, seemed to fly comfortably beneath the radar of U.S. terror investigators - until Tuesday. FBI agents swooped in on the Palestinian cleric at his Strongsville home, arresting him on a relatively minor - and...

Aid push made for 5 tied to Hamas Backers seek to raise $500,000 for Muslim brothers' legal team 02/15/2003 By STEVE McGONIGLE / The Dallas Morning News Supporters of five brothers accused of doing business with Middle Eastern terrorists are asking the Dallas-area Muslim community to help raise $500,000 to pay for a team of prominent attorneys hired to defend the men. The Muslim Legal Fund of America, a nonprofit group established by friends of Richardson businessman Ghassan Elashi and his brothers, is having a fund-raiser Saturday at the Dallas Central Mosque. A leaflet distributed by the fund described...